From the tone of the press release one would be led to believe that Apple had completed its transition to LCD and abandoned the old and less efficient display techology. Actually, this goal was still far and it took quite a few years until all Macintosh products were actually CRT-free.

The transition first started in March 1998 when the original Apple Studio Display 15″ LCD was introduced at a whopping 1999 USD. Designed to be used with the PowerMac G3 Blue & White and fitting the translucent plastics design language, the Apple Studio Display 15″ LCD was the first non-CRT Apple display, touted at the time as being “twice as bright and sharp”, having “twice the contrast ratio” but also occupying “less than half the desktop space” and weighting just “a quarter of the weight of a conventional monitor”.

After switching all of its external displays to LCD in 2001, at the beginning of the following year Apple introduced a new generation of iMac, powered by a G4 processor and resembling a sunflower, or, more prosaically, a posable desk lamp with a flat panel screen perching atop its adjustable arm, or stem, if you wish.

Apple, though, was not done with the CRT: not only it kept selling the 500 and 600 MHz iMac G3 models until March 2003 but even launched a new low-cost Macintosh with a built-in 17-inch cathode ray tube monitor. It was the eMac, which was originally designed for the educational market but proved to be so sought-after that its distribution was eventually widened to the mass market and marketed as “the most affordable digital hub”.
The last eMac model was finally discontinued in October 2005, and with it – after more than seven years – Apple finally said goodbye to the CRT.

Booch: [...] Predicting the future has always been impossible, but what’s your hope, and vision for what computers- and what’s it like at 20?
Atkinson: The first thing is, get rid of the keyboard and the mouse, and replace them with a smooth plate called a touch plate; it’s responsive to gentle, stroking touch. We can enter characters by touching on a character and stroking through others around it, and we can enter whole- instead of typing i-n-g, we’re typing “ing” – we’re entering text at a higher level. Shift key and the whole thing becomes a touching-pointing device. Forget this teeny little scratch pad on your portable. So, one is the touch plate. Another avenue is that as computers get smaller and ubiquitous, working with computers has to enter into a dialogue, not this thing where you’re commanding the computer, but where actually you’re having a conversation. The computers have to get to where they actually understand the flow of a conversation. It’s not just a speechrecognition thing. It’s a language understanding problem. And when it does, we can have, like in the Ender series, a little crystal in our ear that’s listening to everything we’re listening to and whispering little things in our ear, and it’s connected into the wireless net.

Booch: You’re referring to Ender’s Game?
Atkinson: Yes, Ender’s Game and the whole series of Orson Scott Card books. I think the smaller we go, the more we need to rely on audible interfaces. And I think that programming needs to be a conversation of what it is you’re looking for. You say, well I want to do this, and then that’s ambiguous, but whatever you’re talking about, this other entity is asking you some questions about it, and you refine it.

Booch: Very cool. Andy, what are your thoughts?
Hertzfeld: Oh, a lot of what Bill said. I think that clearly the next really big frontier in user interface is going to be the language understanding. That really is as much of a leap as the graphic user interface was. There are lots of problems to be solved but it’s pretty fair, as Bill said, for the mobile application, the keyboard. I’ve been experimenting with little ideas in that space myself. The voice recognition software is really good today, but it doesn’t make sense to use it at your desktop because you can still do it better with the keyboard and the mouse. But suddenly, when you’re standing up, the keyboard and mouse are useless. Of course, computers are going to be everywhere. You’re going to need to have the computer on your person. So, the speech recognition I think is important. But I would say the next really important thing is getting the software industry on a level playing field, a place that’s really open to innovation. I think the way that’s going to happen is if the shared infrastructure becomes available and is owned by the community of its users and developers instead of a psychotically driven business force. And that’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen over the next year. So, it’s not the far years. I think once we have a level playing field open to innovation, we can start to really explore the possibilities better. And then I’ve been thinking about agent-type user interfaces. Bill’s into that too. But the graphic user interface, there’s always direct manipulation. If you’re steering it at the steering wheel, you can only do things while you’re at the steering wheel. Eventually we’re going to want to set up policies where the tireless computer can execute our policies for us, continuously, especially with the network.

Atkinson: Yes, drive me to work and let me know when we get there.
Hertzfeld: I think there’s a very fertile area right now in exploring and getting it right – like Apple more or less got right with the Mac – getting the agency-user interfaces right. Things that can happen while you’re not directly controlling it will be a frontier in the next few years.

In July 2010 Apple introduced, as a standard accessory, the Magic Trackpad, “the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer [which] uses the same Multi-Touch technology you love on the MacBook Pro [and] supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen”.

Also in 2010 Apple bought Siri, Inc. and in the October of 2011 integrated into the iPhone its product, the intelligent voice assistant, called Siri, which “lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more” without looking on the screen. Thanks to the “Eyes free” feature, Siri can also be used in a car, activated through a voice command button on the steering wheel, making users able to ask questions without taking their eyes off the road.
In 2012 Siri was also made available on other iOS devices such as recent iPod touch and iPad models.

It’s also worth mentioning that at least since October 2010 Google (for which Hertzfeld now works) has being testing the Google Driverless Car and as of September 2012 three U.S. states, Nevada, Florida and California, have passed laws permitting driverless cars.

Note: all pictures are “Courtesy of Apple”.

The initial 1992 Performa family consisted of three models: the Macintosh Performa 200, Macintosh Performa 400 and the Macintosh Performa 600/600 CD. All of them were shipped installed with an optimized version of System 7 called System 7.1P, “designed to make using the Macintosh even easier for first-time computer buyers”.

The Performa 200, code named “Lady Kenmore”, was basically a Macintosh Classic II, released one year after the original and bundled with a 2400/9600 baud fax/modem and extra software. It was discontinued in April 1993, one month after Apple introduced its successor, the Performa 250, which was based on the Macintosh Color Classic.

The Performa 400 was a lowly Macintosh LC II, originally released six months before, in March. Bundled with several different hard drives and software, and rereleased in four variants as the Performa 400, 405, 410, and 430, it unfortunately had the same shortcomings of the LC II, i.e. the LC’s 16-bit data path, which crippled the speed of the relatively fast 16 MHz 68030 processor.

The Performas 600 and 600CD had the look and were based on the motherboard of the Macintosh IIvi but were released a bit later in the consumer market, and sported the IIvx’s 68030 32 MHz processor. The Performa 600 CD were among the first Macintoshes with an internal CD-ROM drive which could read data, play audio discs and also supported Kodak’s Photo CD technology.

The last batch of Performas was introduced in 1996 and discontinued during 1997 and early 1998. Among the last ones was also the first and only original model ever released, the Performa 6400, which had a new tower case design. It was Apple’s first consumer-aimed mid-range computer and had optional A/V capabilities: its innards were also used for the Performa 6360.

The Performa 200 picture is © Maja Vervoort, which has kindly authorized the reproduction alongside this text.

The move followed Apple’s decision to radically change the look of the iMac, which in January 2002 not only abandoned the G3 CPU but acquired a flat panel screen perched on a white matte half-dome, with the effect of looking like a lamp (or a sunflower, according to Apple’s designer, Jonathan Ive). The previous iMac line was discontinued except for some lower spec models which were kept available until March 2003.

Although the eMac was much more powerful and substantially bulkier, due to the bigger screen, in the following years it revealed itself as a heir to the original iMac, even inheriting its place as the entry-level Mac, with an affordable 999 USD price tag.

Unfortunately, the eMac couldn’t just be bought by anyone: it was sold only to students and educational institutions (hence the prolonged availability of the iMac). But Apple quickly changed its mind: demand for the eMac proved so strong that the distribution was eventually expanded to the public at large and the computer was marketed as “the most affordable digital hub”.

The eMac was produced and sold for three years and a half, during which it was upgraded with faster CPUs, graphic processors, USB 2.0 (it initially had only 1.1 ports) and even a Bluetooth internal module but left unchanged as far as design and market positioning was concerned.
The last eMac model, which had a 1.42 GHz G4 CPU, was released in May 2005 and then discontinued in October. The Mac mini had already dethroned it as the entry level Macintosh of choice, and the educational market was well served by a low spec version of the G5-based (and then by an Intel Core Duo-based) white 17″ iMac.

Image courtesy of Apple.

I had the chance to speak a bit with him during his promotional tour for the italian edition, which was published by Hoepli.

Stories of Apple: How long were you at Apple?
Jay Elliot: I was at Apple from 1980 to 1986. Late part of 1980 to the late part of 1986.

SoA: And what was your role? 

JE: I was Senior Vice President of what they call the “operation side”.
I really focused on the human side of the company so I kept that title when I had the IT operations and the financial operations… I ran sort of the administrative engine of Apple on the job but I also worked in the Mac group directly for Steve. [...] I really had two jobs. 

SoA: Was Jef Raskin still there when you worked for the Mac group? 

JE: Raskin was there but then he left. The funny thing about Jef Raskin was a very bright man, very interesting guy but [he] saw no future with the mouse. Amazing. He wanted to use [just] the keyboard.

SoA: How many people were employed by Apple when you started out there? 

JE: At the time I started there was about twelve people [in the Mac group]. They worked in a place called Texaco Towers, which is a small little building but then it built up to about forty people pretty fast and Andy [Hertzfeld] joined the group. He had been in the Apple II group [...] things were sort of moving pretty quickly.
We needed a head of engineering so I brought on a guy named Bob Belleville. Bob is an interesting guy, by the way, he really could stand up to Steve pretty much. [...]

SoA: I read about Bob Belleville in Andy Hertzfeld’s book as a person who had to mediate between engineers and other parts of Apple. But I know there were problems with some of the engineers… 

JE: Right, right. It was interesting because Bob was really keen to get in [...] He was a PhD and just a very very brilliant guy [...] Bob had a way of really being able to – as best as he could – facilitate this interaction.

SoA: Do you think Bob Belleville could be described as the “Project Manager” of the Macintosh project?
JE: Yes, right. yes.

SoA: Apple uses the “Product Marketing” term, which is quite peculiar. Can you explain what does that term mean at Apple? 

JE: Basically, the secret of what I believe was the success of Apple has been the product. Steve is the product guy. It is what I call a “product-centric organization” so everything is built around the product. Product Marketing is really the liaison between the product and marketing and sales. There’s that extra step to make sure the features of the product aren’t lost in this translation into getting it into the market. [...] It’s a “during the process” thing, it’s [about] integrating any changes or anything that comes out of [say] the marketing group and maybe needs to be considered in the product itself.
Sometimes it’s good. In the early days in Apple it was not good [...]. Ultimately [John] Sculley organized [Apple] in a more functional way: he just set up one marketing department for all of the products. [But] That doesn’t work.

SoA: So you think that the unification of Apple’s resources [done by John Sculley] was a problem? 

JE: Right, [not] being product-focused but being more Apple-market focused

SoA: Which other people were important in the early stages of Apple? 

JE: Mike Murray came in [and he] was a very bright marketing guy, he was really critical. The bad news about Mike was [that] he didn’t really understand [...] the problem Apple had in those days with the Mac, [that] they totally mis-focused it. They focused against IBM in the business market: big mistake! Even Regis McKenna who was the guru of all PR and was the branding part of Apple, he [also] totally mis-focused the Macintosh.

SoA: Do you think Apple should have kept doing just consumer products? 

JE: Absolutely. Look what happened as soon as Steve left Apple. That was a big mistake [...] Mac sales weren’t doing well, and for a good reason, cause [what they addressed] really wasn’t the right market. Steve goes off to [do] NeXT, another corporate product which is very expensive to a market that [also] wasn’t really a great market. That was a failure but when he came back at Apple, with his Pixar experience [...] he understood “Hey, I’m a consumer guy”. When he came back, the biggest acceleration was from finding that he has always been a consumer guy. He just got off track. You know, I blame Sculley for that. And I blame Mike Murray. He’s a very bright guy, a good guy, very critical about the whole thing how the Mac was positioned in the bags and the logo and all of the graphics but [he] missed what the market was really about.

SoA: And what can you tell me about Jean Louis Gassée? 

JE: Ah, Jean Louis! [laughs] I was involved in setting up [Apple in] Europe [...] I actually brought Jean Louis in. He had been an Apple dealer there [in France] and he was really into Apple products. And then Mike Spindler hapened. Mike Spindler was a incredibly great international marketing guy. [...] He was brilliant at international programs. Unfortunately he got put out of his realm and… when they made him President of Apple I couldn’t believe that. [...] Jean Louis is brilliant. He’s a typical frenchman, machiavellian. He’s the one who blew the whistle on Steve when Steve tried the coup and Steve was pissed off at me ’cause I disagreed with that, I wouldn’t [root for him]. I said that’s a stupid thing to do: if you want Sculley out of hear, walk to his office, and [tell him to] get the hell out. You’re the chairman of the board, I mean, the guy is not doing his job, so…
And when he didn’t do that I went to the Board of Directors to warn them about Sculley [...] and ultimately that cost me my job. [...] The board was just [interested in] economics, stock price and the future of the enterprise.

SoA: Don’t you think that getting out of Apple, experiencing failure [at NeXT] and then being reborn as a successful manager at Pixar actually helped Steve Jobs when he got back at Apple? Wasn’t his ousting actually good, in the end? Some think that he matured during that time and when he got back [at Apple] he was a different man. 

JE: Well, some do [think that]. But he also learned the lesson that if you have a Board of Directors, they’d better follow your vision; they’d better be your Board of Directors, not somebody else’s. You know, when the Board rejected the 1984 ad, it should have been an enormous message to Steve that, hey wait a minute, there’s something here… I mentioned that to him, by the way, that he’d better be conscious because [the Board] didn’t get [the ad]. They really didn’t get what the Mac meant. [And Steve] learned that as he went through all these other issues: he took over Pixar, and then at NeXT. he learned that he needed the right people, the right team, that they really had to buy into the vision [...] and the product.
The old Board, how many of them actually used Apple products? I mean, [...] It’s all part of this whole system. I think that’s one part he learned really well. Then he learned that he’s a CEO. He’s a founder. He can’t work for somebody else. And I’m the same, by the way. That’s what I learned.

SoA: What’s your opinion about the people who came after John Sculley? Michael Spindler and also Gil Amelio. 

JE: Gil? Actually, he’s the hero ’cause he’s brought Steve in. I don’t think he did it on purpose, I think he was trying to bring back… He was an absolute failure. He would have been an absolute disaster. I mean, he came out of the semiconductor industry [...] everybody hated them there, brought his own team. He also brought Ellen Hancock, by the way. Ellen Hancock and I worked together at IBM. [...] She actually was to be nominated the first female IBM Fellow.

SoA: So you think that one of Gil Amelio’s right moves was having Miss Hancock on his team? 

JE: Yes, right. No, I mean, that was horrible but it served a purpose ultimately to bring Steve back. And I think that both of them were intrigued by Steve. They heard all the Apple history and all that stuff… and Jean Louis [lost the bid] ’cause he came to one meeting and he came like cocky like it’s a done deal and Steve comes in and does his “Steve magic” and clearly as an Operating System, Be Vs. NeXT was no match. They had to have the NeXT [Operating] System [...] you have to give them credit. They really saved Apple, unknowingly.

SoA: Do you use a Macintosh? 

JE: I have a “Mac family”. I have two teenagers. My son’s here, Federico and [...] everything is a Mac. I also have one of the original Macs. I have serial number two. It’s in my garage. [...] The first hundred had our names on them so I have one with my name on it.

SoA: Thank you very much 

JE: You’re welcome. I hope you had a good view, a good insight.

Here is Steve Jobs’ presentation during the first Apple Music Event:

The promotional video that followed the announcement:

The first TV ad:

The interactive QuickTime VR movie:

All contents are “courtesy of Apple”.